Issue 8 - December 2011

Contents

• News from the Secretariat
• Policy groups
• Technical work
• ISO/CASCO liaisons
• News in brief
• ISO/CASCO diary

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ISO Committee on conformity assessment – ISO/CASCO

The committee
The ISO Committee on conformity assessment - ISO/CASCO prepares standards relating to the practice of testing, inspection and certification, studies means of assessing the conformity of products, processes, services and management systems to appropriate standards and promotes mutual recognition of national conformity assessment systems.

Definition of conformity assessment
"Conformity assessment" is the term given to the processes that are used to demonstrate that a product (tangible),service, management system or body meets specified requirements. These requirements are contained in ISO/IEC standards and guides. The use of ISO/IEC standards in conformity assessment procedures allows for harmonization throughout the world and this, in turn, not only facilitates international trade between countries but also facilitates trade within countries by giving the purchaser of the product or service confidence that it meets the requirements.

News from the Secretariat

ISO/CASCO membership as of 2011-11-16: P‑members 69 – O‑members 46.

27th ISO/CASCO plenary meeting, 6-7 October 2011 in Geneva
The 27th ISO/CASCO plenary meeting was held in Geneva on 6-7 October. Some100 participants were gathered for the two days, representing 34 ISO/CASCO national member bodies and 24 external liaison organizations. This plenary was also the opportunity to pay tribute to Olivier Peyrat's (AFNOR Director General) successful five years assignment as Chair of ISO/CASCO and to officially introduce the incoming Chair, Lane Hallenbeck who is Vice President of Accreditation Services with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)..

The plenary resolutions are available to the ISO/CASCO members on ISODOC.

ISO/CASCO Open Day on conformity assessment.
More than 90 international experts participated in the ISO/CASCO Open Day on conformity assessment held in Montreux, Switzerland, on 5 October 2011. The event was intended to be as interactive as possible so that participants could exchange information, views and experience and therefore gain insight on different conformity assessment issues.
One of the main sessions, led by Geoff Visser, consultant, focused on the best practices for establishing and operating "national mirror committees" This session sought to discuss and share ideas on how to identify and engage stakeholders in the formation of effective mirror committees which are key in the ISO process for developing consensus.
The results of this session is in a report that can be viewed on the Open Day website.

ISO/CASCO Open Day, working group session. Photo: ISO/Tranchard

The second session, led by Randy A. Dougherty and Alister Dalrymple, co-convenors of ISO/CASCO working group WG 21 concentrated on the changes to ISO/IEC 17021:2011, Conformity assessment – Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems, published in February 2011. They presented a tutorial on the standard to help people better understand the revisions made. This tutorial is available on the ISO website in English, French and Spanish.

Parallel sessions were also held on five of the ISO/CASCO working groups where the convenors presented the main issues of their group, the latest development and the main challenges ahead. The sessions were very interactive and gave an opportunity to ISO/CASCO members to learn more about the current conformity assessment standards under development. 

ISO/CASCO Open day, session on national mirror Committees. Photo: ISO/Tranchard

Policy groups

CPC, Chairman's Policy and Coordination group
The ISO/CASCO CPC gives explicit recognition to ISO/CASCO’s policy role and oversees the internal coordination of work amongst ISO/CASCO subgroups.  Its main tasks are to study conformity assessment issues, create policy recommendations for possible endorsement by ISO/CASCO and provide advice on the priorities for ISO/CASCO work.
The CPC gathered for its 16th meeting in October 2011at the ISO Central Secretariat. Among various issues, the group discussed:

• The new composition of the CPC membership that will be effective as of 2012. The Secretariat is expecting to receive nominations from the ISO/CASCO members by the end of the year
• The proposed revisions to the interpretation process for standard developed by ISO/CASCO to ensure a more efficient process
• How the ISO complaint mechanism for management system standards can be improved

The CPC will next meet in March 2012.

STAR, Strategic Alliance and Regulatory group
The STAR is one of ISO/CASCO policy group which main tasks are to identify possible international economic sectors and intergovernmental organizations for engagement with ISO/CASCO, to maintain a forum whereby economic sectors and intergovernmental organizations can interact with ISO/CASCO and to promote the ISO/IEC standards and guides developed by ISO/CASCO.

The STAR held its 8th meeting in October 2011. Some of the issues discussed were:

• The composition of working groups that develop standards
• the promotion the use of WebEx as a means of participating in working group meetings
• the involvement other industry sectors (e.g. financial) in the STAR group

The next STAR meeting will take place in March 2012 in Geneva.

TIG, Technical Interface Group
The TIG is a technically focused group whose main tasks include assisting the ISO/CASCO Secretariat to analyze documents received from ISO technical committees (TCs), to determine if there are conformity assessment issues, to provide input into the technical work of ISO TCs and provide advice to TCs on the design and development of sector specific conformity assessment provisions.

The TIG held its 8th meeting in March 2011. The group reviewed the document on the cooperation status with Technical Committees (TC's) and discussed the open issues. The TIG is actively involved in 30 ISO TCs.

Technical work

WG 29, Certification of products
The Draft International Standard (DIS) ballot closed at the end of October. The document has been approved by 88% of ISO P-Members and by 76 % of IEC P-members. The working group will meet at the end of February in Munich for what will probably be its last meeting as the expected outcome is to process the document to the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) stage.

WG 30, Certification for persons
Similarly to WG 29, the document has been balloted at the Draft International Standard (DIS) stage during the same period. The ISO/IEC DIS 17024 has been approved by 95 % of ISO P-Members and by 91 % of IEC P-members. A drafting group meeting was held in September to address the members' comments to prepare the working group meeting scheduled for December. The standard is expected to be published in mid 2012.
The working group will roll out a series of workshops in various region of the world throughout 2012 and 2013 to raise awareness, explain and provide clarification on the new standard.

WG 31, Inspection
WG 31 met on 19-21 July in Geneva to review the comments received on ISO/IEC DIS 17020 and agreed to process the document to FDIS. The FDIS ballot started on 2011-11-17 for two months and the standard is planned for publication early 2012.

WG 31 meeting July 2011

WG 32, Fundamentals of product certification and certification scheme
The working group met in Geneva in October for a three-day meeting to address the comments submitted during the working group consultation on the second Working Draft. The discussions were very fruitful and the experts unanimously approved to process the document to the Committee Draft  (CD) stage. The ballot for ISO/IEC CD 17067 opened mid-November for a four month period. The group will meet at the end of April 2012 in Geneva to address the members' comments.

WG 33, Third-party audit report
The WG met on 24-25 November to review the comments received on the Draft Technical Specification (DTS) ISO/IEC DTS 17022. The TS is planned for publication early 2012 and is intended for incorporation in ISO/IEC 17021 at its next revision.

New WG 34, Third-party environmental management system certification
WG 34 is a new WG constituted as a joint working group ISO/CASCO-ISO/TC 207/SC 2, Environmental management systems, with 39 experts from both communities. Randy Dougherty (ISO/CASCO) and Nigel Carter (TC 207) are joint convenors. The WG 34 will develop requirements for third party certification auditing of environmental management system for conformance to ISO 14001. The document is based on Annex 1 of ISO/IEC 17021:2011. A three-day meeting took place in September 2011 and the next one is scheduled for 12-14 December 2011.

For general information on active ISO/CASCO working groups, please visit this link.

ISO/CASCO liaisons

See the full list of organizations in liaison with ISO/CASCO

News in brief

From left to right: Olivier Peyrat, ISO/CASCO Chair 2007-2011, Sean MacCurtain ISO/CASCO Secretary and Lane Hallenbeck ISO/CASCO Chair 2012-2014

ISO/CASCO changes chairman in 2012
Olivier Peyrat's term as ISO/CASCO chair ends in December 2011 after a five-year assiduous assignment. Under his leadership, ISO/CASCO saw many improvements. Olivier contributed to increase significantly the ISO/CASCO profile with regard to the members and to key stakeholders from industry and intergovernmental organizations. Amongst Olivier's main achievements, he introduced the STAR and the TIG groups, the eNewsletter and the concept of annual workshop. He developed a maintenance structure for all working groups and a management systems standard complaints mechanism. He reviewed the CPC membership to be more inclusive and has all the ISO/CASCO meetings broadcast via Web conference.

On behalf of ISO/CASCO and the members we would like to thank Olivier for his dedication and his great contribution to the committee's work.

Lane Hallenbeck will take on the ISO/CASCO Chair in January 2012. He is Vice President for Accreditation Services at the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), responsible for the direction of internationally recognized accreditation services. In this role he has had led multiple accreditation program development efforts, creating and expanding public-private partnerships between industry and government.  Lane also has a strong record of customer service in conformity assessment process and system implementation.  He has been actively involved in conformity assessment fora at the international level for many years, including the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (PAC), InterAmerican Accreditation Cooperation (IAAC) and in ISO, with ISO/CASCO.

Lane’s prior experience includes many years of technical leadership, including Vice President of the management systems registrar affiliate of the American Bureau of Shipping, and Program Manager for the TRW Space & Electronics Group.  Lane was president of the Independent Association of Accredited Registrars (IAAR) from 1997 to 1999.  He holds an MS in Technology Management from Pepperdine University and a BA in Life Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and has also been certified as a Quality Systems Lead Auditor.

ISO Survey of Certifications - 2010
The ISO Survey 2010 was released in December andis available on a CD-ROM in Excel files covering 1993 to 2010, which allows comparisons since the survey was launched (for more information see ISO press release).

The 2010 survey reveals an increase in certificates of 6.23 %, worldwide total of 1 457912 certificates and users of one or more of the standards in 178 countries.

The biggest increases in certification are to the sector-specific ISO 22000:2005 food safety management system standard which is up by 34 % and to the issue-specific ISO/IEC 27001:2005 information security management system standard which has risen by 21 %. This trend has no doubt had a downward impact on the generic ISO 9001 standard for quality management, the model on which the above standards are based, which has increased by 4 %.

ISO/CASCO diary

As the next issue of the ISO/CASCO eNewsletter will be in March 2012, we would like to take the opportunity to wish you already a:

Happy Festive Season!